NCIS recap: The good (fake) doctor

When the world’s best heart surgeon is found dead with someone else’s blood on his scrubs, the man to solve the mystery has to be Dr. Emmett Trowbridge, aka Alden Parker (Gary Cole).

How does the magnificently coiffed agent end up wielding a scalpel and a fake identity? It involves a kidnapping, a cartel, and a wicked crick in his neck. Let’s recap!

Dr. Erik Harper (Tim Russ), a renowned rare-tumor cardiothoracic surgeon, is found shot dead after being snatched from the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center parking lot.

The team heads to the scene with a slow-moving Parker in tow; what he claims to be nothing more than a stiff neck is painful enough to limit his mobility and jeopardize his performance in the two-on-two basketball tournament he and Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) are expected to dominate the following day.

Parker grimaces but complies when Palmer (Brian Dietzen) summons him to study Dr. Harper’s body at the bottom of a short incline. Then he grimaces even harder when Palmer suggests acupuncture, having forgotten about Parker’s trypanophobia. (That’s a fear of needles, if you’re not up on your phobia names.)

When anesthesia turns up in the blood on Dr. Harper’s scrubs, the team wonders if he was forced to perform surgery for someone powerful and scary. When you care enough to kidnap the very best, you kidnap Dr. Harper, I guess. (McGee [Sean Murray] suggsts Putin or Kim Jong Un, but spoiler alert, it wasn’t either of those dudes.)

Kasie (Diona Reasonover) provides the first lead when she pulls Dr. Harper’s mostly melted digital recorder from between the seats of the van the kidnappers used and then torched.  The recovered recording mentions El Viento, the nickname of ruthless cartel boss Carlos Savina.

And with that, Deputy Director Vance (Rocky Carroll) enters the chat, his arm in a sling after that sniper round to the back last week. Savina eluded capture and killed two agents in an opp he oversaw years ago, and Vance has been eager to arrest him ever since.

Of course, Parker’s current level of stiffness doesn’t fill him with optimism, and nothing — not Kasie’s inversion table, Knight’s (Katrina Law) ointment, or McGee’s muscle stimulator — is helping.

While the team’s able to confirm that Savina and his people landed at a nearby airfield, they also learn that Dr. Harper has stopped performing surgeries because he’d developed a hand tremor that he was seeing physiatrist Dr. Carrie Moran (Krishna Smitha) to rehab.

The news sends Parker to Dr. Harper’s longtime surgical partner, Dr. Clara Logan (Christina Kirk), who's grieving his death. She didn’t know about Dr. Harper’s tremor but says it would’ve made heart surgery almost impossible, which likely explains why the cartel killed him.

It also explains why those same guys show up at the hospital to snatch Dr. Logan for another attempt at surgery. Thinking quickly, Parker throws on a white coat and insists that he's necessary for a successful operation. After a sliiiiightly awkward hesitation, he gives his name as Dr. Emmett Trowbridge and ends up cuffed to the wall of a van alongside Dr. Logan. Traveling on the metal floor of a moving vehicle with your arm over your head seems not ideal for a guy with a stiff neck!

After busting Parker’s chops for giving the kidnappers a name from Spies Like Us, Dr. Logan confesses that she’s never done surgery on a tumor as large as Savina’s without Harper. Parker tells her he's as confident in her abilities as he is that the team will rescue them before it comes to that.

Sure enough, the team gets Parker’s SOS text and find his gun, badge, and cell phone at the hospital. He set his phone up to record the altercation, and the video shows the kidnapping, including the name of the bio-waste company the cartel used as a cover to enter the hospital. Torres and McGee stop the company van that didn’t respond to the owner’s request for a check-in, but alas, the back is empty.

In the actual kidnapping van, Parker tells Dr. Logan that his surgical plan is to say “I concur” as often as possible, a la Leo in Catch Me If You Can. She scoffs at another movie reference, then tells him that if anyone tries to question his doctor credentials, he should act arrogant and condescending — you know, like a surgeon. “One more thing,” she says, “whatever you do, be sure to never, ever—” 

But the kidnappers throw open the van doors before she can finish and thrust them into a homemade operating room. Savina (Juan Javier Cardenas) is there with a gross, stiched-up incision from Dr. Harper’s surgery attempt.

He’s skeptical about this Dr. Trowbridge who’s not mentioned in any articles about Drs. Harper and Logan, and Parker snaps, “I have an MD from Harvard. I am board certified in cardiothoracic medicine and trauma surgery. I have been awarded citations from seven—”

Logan calmly cuts him off to tell Savina that this is his surgical team, take it or leave it. This gets things moving, and Logan and Parker have the best, most ridiculous, most entertaining conversation from behind their surgical masks as they’re huddled mere inches apart over a sedated Savina’s split-open chest. 

“Bold choice to steal Alec Baldwin’s speech from Malice,” she hiss-whispers.

“You watch too many movies,” Parker whispers back.

“Look who’s talking.”

“Travolta. It’s another classic.”

I LOVE THEM. Dr. Logan, who’s been as cool and collected as humanly possible throughout this ordeal, rolls with Parker’s “I concur”-ing and his fumbling attempts to grab the correct surgical tools. Then when she spots an unattended cell phone, she grabs it to call for help, but one of the cartel boys breaks her wrist, leaving Parker responsible for touching Savina’s EXPOSED, BEATING HEART.

Thankfully, McGee has tracked down the company that built the clean room for the surgery, and they storm the OR.

One of the henchmen takes Dr. Logan hostage, but Parker overcomes his trypanophobia and stabs the guy with a big ol’ hypodermic full of potassium solution, which stops his heart. (Parker knows this’ll work thanks to Dr. Logan’s calm narration of every step of the surgery so he could try to keep up.)

When Savina comes to, he’s cuffed to the bed in an actual hospital. The good news: Dr. Logan and her team removed his tumor. The bad news: a delighted Vance puts him under arrest.

When Knight congratulates a scrubs-clad Parker on his role in the takedown, he somberly tells her, “We’re doctors, not god. The Hippocratic oath says first do no harm. But that’s something you might not understand until you put on the scrubs and hold a beating heart in your hands.” Then he greets a "fellow" doctor before stepping into Dr. Logan’s room where she’s recovering from wrist surgery. And y’all, it’s on. 

Knight watches in glee as Dr. Logan asks Parker to call her Clara and Parker in turn asks her to call him Alden. He’s worried about needle-related nightmares and inquires about a prescription, and there’s so much heated eye contact that I’m thinking the prescription Clara has in mind isn’t found behind the counter of any pharmacy, if you get my drift.

Before I can start planning their wedding, Torres shows up to give Parker a congratulatory hug — but instead spins Parker around to do his special bear-hug spine-crack, which immediately fixes Parker’s neck issues. (If only he’d said yes to Nick’s offer of a therapeutic hug in the opening minutes of his episode!) 

Parker ushers the team out of Dr. Logan’s room, but she calls him back to thank him one more time, and he smiles and thanks her back.

Okay, I’m thinking autumn nuptials. Do you concur?

Stray shots

• It’s a damn shame we never got to see Parker and DiNozzo go toe to toe in a movie quote-off.
• Kasie’s “I can do it” Rosie the Riveter jumpsuit and bandanna are adorable. And a round of villainous applause for the cartel guys who either put horsehair, pumpkin seeds, a pacifier, and a bonsai tree into the torched van to create a billion false leads, or else they rented the world’s filthiest van. Either way, fair play to them.
• Speaking of adorable, how great was that glimpse of McGee laughing at Parker and Torres horsing around in the final scene? I don’t know if that was in character or if Sean Murray was just enjoying the show, but either way, what a fun set that must be.
  
• This has to be the funny Gary Cole episode both Brian Dietzen and Wilmer Valderrama promised, and it did not disappoint. Two more episodes this season, friends! 

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